Memory lane...

... I've just found this old place again. So much has changed. If I think too much about it, it aches. I had the confidence, idealism (and blindness) to 'pontificate' (my dad's word) on things I knew nothing about. In some ways I'm tempted to delete my old posts and start again. But I don't think I will. I'm trying to contact that old me; she could write and I can't. I've been lost since summer 07.

I'm trying to write again at the moment. It's something shortish--perhaps a short story, perhaps more, perhaps simply short-lived, which popped into my head a few days ago.

The January winds had not changed since he was a child, despite whatever the newspapers said. Their touch remained a bracing spur from the grave, whether or not it was wrong to be taken out of it. But that day they filled rather than cleaning the lungs, offering iron which had nothing to do with pollution. Clouds had sprouted in the sky like tumours Grey light clarified people on the street, making their movement surprising. All his senses were acute and compressed; the air felt like glass to be flat against, and the leaflet in his hand the only thing that anchored him.

On the other side of the glass stood his wife.

She was somewhere there, hidden on the other side of that city-street, lurking. He kept spreading his hands, and wanted to convey the fact. Sometimes passers-by seemed to understand already; an old man stood on a corner, speaking into the breeze to no one. God is dead, Quirk thought, but didn’t think. Thinking belonged to others.

Sensation. Cold feet. Chafing wind.

A wave of laughter coursed up to his throat. How standard it all was! These were the set reactions, the strategies of denial; you laughed, you cried, you pretended, you even observed it…

Working back into it is so painful. I didn't know Quirk was grieving until he was walking down the street.

And I promise I'll stop being self-regarding and start writing about life next post :)